


The Girl With The Stardust Tattoo

by gloriouswhisperstyphoon



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern, Based On The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, Child Abuse, F/M, I Also Do Not Write Child Abuse But It Will Be Mentioned, I Do Not Write Rape But It Will Be Mentioned, The Archive Warnings Can Be Deceptive, mystery thriller
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-23
Updated: 2018-10-23
Packaged: 2019-07-14 17:06:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 17,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16044830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gloriouswhisperstyphoon/pseuds/gloriouswhisperstyphoon
Summary: Forty years ago, Mara Jade Palpatine vanished from her family's enclave in the town of Oare with no body, no witnesses and no evidence. But her father is convinced that it was one of his own family that did it, hiring disgraced journalist Cassian Andor to investigate her murder.





	1. The Girl Who Knew Too Much

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FreakCityPrincess](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FreakCityPrincess/gifts).



> Warning: This story contains large amounts of mentions of abuse, both of women and of children. I only make references to it and I DO NOT condone it, but this is a warning that they are and will be mentioned.

Cassian Andor was woken from his restless sleep by the incessant buzzing of his cellphone, its tinny little tune drilling its way through his skull, his resignation letter stark white and black pixels on the screen in front of him.

He lifted his head off his desk, its disorder made no better by him having slept on it.

His voice was groggy when he picked up. “Cassian Andor, what can I do for you?”

The voice on the other end was firm. “My name is Wilhuff Tarkin. I’m a lawyer representing a client that wants to have a word with you.”

Damnit. Not another journalist looking for a scoop. He ran a hand through his hair. “You can tell your client that he can either talk to me directly or he won’t talk at all.”

“I mean that my client wishes to talk to you in person.”

“Then tell him to make an appointment and meet me at the office. But warn him I’m clearing out my desk tomorrow, so he needs to hurry.”

The other man spoke in a tone that brooked absolutely no argument. “My client wants to meet with you in person - he’s in Oare right now - it’ll only be two hours if you drive.”

Cassian sucked in a deep breath.

This sounded like the start to a terrible conspiracy novel. Either this mysterious client was real and had a genuine tip for him or he was a complete crackpot running around with tinfoil on his head telling him that Boris Johnson was a failed clone of Donald Drumpf.

He fiddled idly with a notebook on his desk, listening to the static and silence echoing down the other end of the line.

“My client is quite old - he would prefer it if you came to him instead of the other way around.”

“I don’t make house calls, Mr Tarkin.”

“I hope I can convince you to make an exception. My client isn’t used to people refusing him. I assure you, we can definitely make it worth your while.”

Cassian started placing notebooks in a neat pile, ready to take everything home in boxes.

He hesitated a moment before asking, “And who is your client?”

“A person whose name I suspect you have heard a lot of in your line of work.”

“I’ve heard a lot of names in my line of work.”

There was another long pause.

The line crackled as Tarkin took a breath. “My client’s name is Sheev Palpatine.”

Cassian leaned back in surprise. Palpatine was a god among gods for the bankers of the City, referred to as the Emperor by those that admired him and the Merchant of Death by those that did not. He was a noted industrialist, capitalist and the former head of Empire Enterprises, the man who had founded that sprawling global network of factories, manufacturing and banking. He had a reputation for ruthlessness and for never bending to anybody, the law, other people or even basic morality, even in a strong wind.

But scandal after scandal had rocked the company for the last twenty-five years - ties to warlords, accusations of corruption in the Houses of Parliament. Not to mention the near constant string of boycotts demanded by activists online, which had rendered the name of the company one that was only mentioned in the same breath as gutter rats. The company appeared nowadays to be run by a group of smaller-stature individuals and Cassian hadn’t heard much about them in the news lately.

Until now.

But why a company like this would be reaching out to a notably disgraced left-wing journalist was completely beyond him.

Tarkin started talking again. “We’ll be happy to pay for your expenses and any other needs you might have. All I can say about this meeting is that Palpatine wants to discuss a possible job opportunity.”

He bites his tongue and waits for the other man to make his move. In his experience, the best way to get someone to reveal their game was to just give them enough rope.

“We’d like you to consult on a private matter - you wouldn’t be working for the company, just for Sheev himself.”

“Your call is at a rather inconvenient time -”

“Ah yes, I have seen the headlines. Well, I assume that you’ll have a lot of free time now, yes? But I’m only a messenger. To get all the information, you’ll need to come to Oare. We’ll be expecting you in 3 days time.”

The line clicked.

Cassian pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes before he ran a hand through his hair. He had no idea what was going on, but he couldn’t deny that it intrigued him on both a personal and journalistic level. Corporate intrigue, the involvement of a wealthy industrialist and what appeared to be a personal mystery.

He turned on his computer and started looking through the headlines about Empire Enterprises. It wasn’t necessarily surprising.

A handful of company analyses and stock portfolios which he saved for further notice.

A list of mergers and acquisitions the company had been responsible for in the last few years.

A few scandals that had broken out around Orson Krennic, their current CFO, which had promptly been tamped down.

But on Sheev Palpatine? There was next to nothing on him.

He only appeared in smaller articles extolling the history of the company and then a few country newspapers talking about his eightieth birthday.

Cassian picked at the corner of his mousepad a little before opening up google again to look specifically for news about anything occurring in Oare.

Beyond the simple news of a small country town, he saw a few headlines of note–

HOUSEWIFE FOUND DEAD IN BARN.

BODY FOUND IN PET STORE AFTER HORRIFIC FIRE.

Cassian sat silently at his desk for the next few minutes before he made up his mind and finished packing his desk into a neat series of boxes, uncertain when or if he would ever return to the Alliance offices.

 

\--

 

The journey to Kent passed in near-silence, Tarkin’s words rattling around in Cassian’s brain the whole way as the marshlands passed outside the window. The air outside was damp and the wind absolutely cut through his clothes when he finally got out of the car at the enormous manor just outside the town.

It was almost another planet, a cold and passionless place for all that it was only a few miles away from the bustle and the noise of London. But he was here for answers and so he pressed the doorbell, set just to the left of the huge gate.

Wilhuff Tarkin turned out to be a tall, skeletal man with an air of absolute authority and a face that looked as if he could climb up into one of the period portraits.

“Ah, Cassian Andor. We’ve been waiting to see you.”

Tarkin’s handshake was firm when Cassian took it. “It’s a lovely place.”

A nod of acknowledgement. “Oare is known for its beautiful scenery and its hunting opportunities. We’re a quiet community here.”

“And the murders that I read about that happened in Faversham?”

Tarkin gave a quick shrug, just a slight movement of his shoulder. “Those happened rather a long time ago, Mister Andor. The police sorted it all out quite quickly and people move on.”

The gravel of the manor’s drive crunched under his feet as they walked towards the large house.

“I’m assuming that Mister Palpatine is waiting for me somewhere.”

Tarkin inclined his head, a brief and almost aquiline movement.

“He’s waiting for you in his study. If you’ll follow me this way.”

The manor turned out to be a well-appointed and beautiful wood-panelled building with an air of chilly hostility, as thought anyone who entered would be frozen from within. He instantly decided that no matter what happened here, he’d be heading back to London as soon as he could.

Tarkin was speaking as Cassian looked around, disguising his abject disgust for the tasteless wealth with what he hoped was an expression of awe. “This is the old Coruscant Manor - it used to be home to the entire family and those that helped run the company, but it’s empty now. Krennic likes to live in his own place. You’re more than welcome to stay the night if you want - we’ve got more guest rooms than we know what to do with.”

A door opened in front of them and Cassian came face to face with Sheev Palpatine, the Emperor himself.

He was far older than he appeared in his pictures, the lines of his face pronounced and his posture hunched. But when Cassian looked into his amber eyes, he saw a glimpse of the industrial titan that had once made governments cower before him.

He forced himself to extend a hand for a shake that was waved off, and took a seat.

Palpatine had a far weaker and more nasal voice than Cassian remembered from the news interviews and the press briefings from before he stepped down. “Thank you for coming to meet me here. As you can see, my illness has taken quite a toll on me. I heard that you’d have a lot more free time for personal activities following your resignation so I’m rather glad that you could make it.”

What did he mean by that? He stayed silent. How did you respond to a statement like that?

Palpatine exchanged a look with Tarkin and he left, leaving the two of them in the beautiful, wood-lined room, a large and rather incongruous mirror facing Cassian.

Cassian sat stiffly on the edge of the comfortable leather chair, facing the large open windows behind Palpatine, as the man sat in his own chair, as comfortable in it as an Emperor on his throne.

“I’m going to get straight to the point - you appear like a man who would appreciate this. This isn’t a game and you’re going to listen to what I have to say.”

Cassian pulled his phone out of his pocket, turning on the recorder and forcing himself to smile at Palpatine. Something flickered across the other man’s face at the sight of his phone, but if the recent Eadu debacle had taught him anything, it was that he need firm proof of anything that ever happened.

“Please, feel free to start.”

“There are two things I want to tell you and they’re both quite intertwined. The first is the story of my company, and the second is the story of my family. Both are quite long and quite dark and have a lot of loose ends. It’s all rather difficult to explain, but I want to hire you as a freelance investigator to clear them up.”

Cassian blinked, the image of burning poppy fields flashing in the back of his mind. “I don’t think you understand what I am - I’m a journalist, not a hitman.”

Palpatine looked affronted. “I didn’t mean that I want you to kill my leftover family members. Look at me. I’m old and frail enough that money means nothing."

“So what do you want me to do then?”

“Officially? I want you to ghostwrite my autobiography.”

He resisted the urge to pace the length of the office as his mind started to race, eventually folding his fingers together and laying his hands on the big oak desk between them.

Every muscle in his body told him to leave this place and go back to London, lawyer bills and disgrace be damned. He forced himself to sit still. “And unofficially? What did you want me to do?”

“That’s a rather long story and not quite worth the telling.”

Cassian took a deep breath, trying to restrain his anger. “Mister Palpatine. I’ve been here for all of 20 minutes and I’ve received absolutely no answers. I want them in the next 30 minutes or I’m getting back in my car and going back to London.”

Palpatine was absolutely still behind the desk and something flickered behind his eyes which looked as though it belonged in a dark primordial cave and not in an airy office with Louis XIV furniture. “It’s a very long and complicated story. I don’t think that I’ll be able to cover it in 30 minutes.”

“Then summarise it. That’s what we tend to do in journalism.”

A deep breath from across the table. “You are everything I need for this job. Fierce, intelligent and willing to do anything to get answers. I want you to write my autobiography - I’ll give you all my journals and notebooks, anything you want.”

Cassian raised an eyebrow. “But?”

“My company is in crisis, Cassian. Orson is an excellent leader when he has the right support, but he’s a fair-weather sailor and not one who’s used to dealing with this sort of chaos and turmoil. Tarkin is a good man, but he’s fixated on his own advancement and not that of the company. And the rest of the men on the board are even worse, save for Vader. But what I want from you is to solve a mystery for me.”

Cassian stayed silent, curious about what sort of a mystery a man like this could want solved, even with all the resources in the world at his fingertips.

“Mara Jade was my adopted daughter. She was a beautiful girl, spirited and passionate and she loved life. Her parents were both employed by the company and they didn’t want her, so I took her in as my own and taught her everything I knew. I’ve never had any children of my own, so it was almost always assumed that she’d take the reins from me alongside Darth Vader, the other apprentice that I took, for lack of a better word.

“But then Orson Krennic rose to take control of the day-to-day running of the company while Vader looks after the overall health of it.”

Cassian took a deep breath, processing the information. “And I’m assuming that something happened to Mara?”

A nod. “She was very introverted and grew deeply religious as she grew up, which was strange compared to everyone else in her life, but I tolerated it for her sake. But she was brave and she was smart and I thought that she would be perfect to help take over the company.”

“But?”

“This is why I wanted to hire you. I think someone involved with the company killed Mara and has now spent 40 years trying to drive me insane.”

The old man leaned back in his seat, clearly revelling in the fact that he had finally managed to take Cassian by surprise. Whether that was from the mystery he’d presented or the proposal for him to write his autobiography, he had no idea. Nothing he had read had suggested that someone in the company was capable of premeditated murder.

He gestured for Palpatine to keep talking and stopped looking at his watch. This was far more fascinating than anything he could have imagined.

“It was the day of our company’s annual dinner, but it also happened to coincide with the day of Bonfire night, so there was a parade and a street festival in town that she went to. She left the manor here at around 2:00 p.m. I expected her back home for dinner at 5:00 p.m., and she was to be there with the other young people that had been invited.”

Cassian cocked his head. “So she never managed to get home?”

The old man shook his head. “No. Quite the opposite. She returned home early, around 3:00 p.m.”

“So what could have happened to her?”

“There was an accident on the only road that leads out of the manor. A farmer from a small holding flipped his fuel truck. It was a complete shambles. Men were running around everywhere trying to get him out of the truck, even though he was lying in a sea of oil and sparks.”

Where was this story going?

“What it boiled down to, though, was that this manor was completely isolated for the next 24 hours, and no one was able to get in or out. The only way was through the helicopters that had to be brought in to get the injured farmer. Do you understand what that means?”

Cassian nodded. “It’s a locked-room mystery. So you think that someone in the manor killed Mara?”

“No one saw Mara after about 3:20 p.m., when she went up to her room. We thought that she had wandered off, but when she never arrived to dinner, I thought something had gone wrong. I sent Vader to go look for her, but he came back to say that he hadn’t been able to find her; I think I just assumed that she was sulking around the grounds or something. But it was in the morning that we realised something was wrong and that she had disappeared. And from that day, not a trace of her has been found.

“I will give you as much time as you want - every month that you work for me, I will pay you ten thousand pounds. Money is no object. I will also donate enough money to your magazine to offset any particular loss that the upcoming advertiser exodus could pose. All I ask is that you firstly stay in Oare for the duration of this period and that second, you give me a definitive answer before the end of the year.”

Cassian tapped his finger on the armrest of the chair. “I don’t mean to sound callous, Mister Palpatine, but Mara disappeared almost thirty years ago. Why are you hunting her killer down so intensely?”

The old man sat in silence for a good long while before he pushed his chair back and walked to the door, leaning heavily on a cane. Cassian grabbed his phone and rushed to follow him, his confusion mounting the whole time.

They climbed a set of stairs and a musty smell grew stronger and stronger the whole time they ascended, finally reaching a dark and closed door, which Palpatine pushed open.

He paused for a moment, his body blocking Cassian’s entrance into the room.

“One more thing. When Mara was younger, she used to play with Vader’s children - he’s divorced now, so they live in America, but she and Leia, his daughter, used to press flowers to give to me every year on my birthday. Mara was fifteen when she disappeared.”

He opened the door fully and turned on the lights, the room suddenly bathed in the sickly glow of fluorescent lights.

The wall opposite them was completely full of pressed flowers.

“These flowers arrive every year on my birthday. Wrapped in gift paper and sent from London with no return address marked. No fingerprints on any of them.”

The information fluttered through Cassian’s mind like a thousand brilliantly coloured butterflies. Something was missing from this and that infuriated him. There was a pattern to this, and there was an answer to this, he knew.

And then before he knew it, he had opened his mouth. “I’ll get you what you’re looking for.”

  


 

\---

  
  
  


Oare and Faversham had turned out to be tiny little towns, beautiful like a rotting pomegranate to him. Beautiful and appearing ripe on the outside, but the moment you cut open, the seeds spilled out like a decaying and misshapen mass.

Palpatine had offered to show him around, but something in Cassian told him that this offer was not especially genuine.

That, and there was something about him that made his skin crawl.

Cassian flipped through the photo album that he’d made in the last three days.

A picture of twelve year old Mara Jade Palpatine, bows in her hair and smiling as she hugged another girl around the same age. A dark haired woman stood in the background, the tattooed arm of someone just out of frame wrapped around her waist.

Who had been cropped out of the picture?

He grabbed a magnifying glass and tried to work out what the tattoos had been of.

Maybe some sort of tribal marker?

He made a note on a sheet of paper to go talk to a tattoo artist about that in the future. Perhaps it could be useful?

Flip the page.

The photograph of a middle-aged man, wearing a Nazi swastika pin on his lapel amongst a group of other men. Palpatine before his face had become lined and aged.

Palpatine had been a Nazi?

He made a note in the margin of the album. _Identities of other men?_

_When was this photo taken?_

A slight, younger man on Palpatine’s left stood with a large and prominent scar over his left eye and Cassian circled him. That man might be of note in the future.

_Who had the man been?_

_Why had he been so close to Palpatine?_

There was no Nazi insignia on his lapel, but there was something dark poking out from the sleeve of his shirt where it rode up slightly at his wrist.

He made a mental note to try and work out what it was.

Perhaps it might have had something to do with the tattoo he’d seen earlier?

Orson Krennic stood in the back of the photograph, his hair flopping into his eyes and another man’s head blocking all but the left side of his pale face.

Flip the page.

A set of family photos of Mara Jade with the children of Darth Vader, their smiling faces all in prominent focus.

Mara had appeared to put a blond boy into a headlock in the photo while the other two laughed.

Cassian made a little mark in the corner of the picture to get in touch with those children now, to see if they could remember anything about Mara or who had killed her.

A blurry photograph from the local newspaper of the Bonfire Night celebration that Mara attended just before her death.

Her face could be seen in sharp relief in the background of the picture, staring out at something just beyond the fire.

What was she staring at?

What was the expression on her face?

He pulled out a magnifying glass, examining the people around Mara, looking for anything suspicious in the people around her. Or a reflection near her that could point out what was going on.

He noticed a dark item in the hand of someone just to Mara’s left, aimed at something in the direction she was looking.

That dark shadow.

Was that a camera?

Damn, that _was_ a camera.

Right.

He booted up his laptop, bringing the photo up on the screen in photoshop and blowing the whole thing up to try to get a sharper focus on who that mysterious photographer had been.

Nothing but a blur of black and white pixels.

Shit.

He opened up his phone, pulling up Kay’s contact details and waiting for the dial tone. “This is Kay Tuesso, your call is pointless, please don’t leave a message.”

Cassian rolled his eyes. “Hi, this is Cassian, I’m sending you a photograph that I need you to blow up in photoshop. Anything that you can get about the identity of the photographer just to the left of the redhead would be appreciated.”

He let out a deep sigh and pressed his hands into his eyes.

Why did nothing involving this family make any sense?

  


 

\--

  
  


 

A clink from the table.

He blinked again, looking up into Krennic’s empty eyes and red cheeks as the man lifted a wine glass to his lips, his throat working as he swallowed the wine.

Oh. That’s right. He was supposed to be at dinner with the directors of the company.

Cassian forced himself to smile, lifting his glass in honour of the company, before taking a tiny sip as Krennic took another rather clumsy gulp. “So, Mister Krennic -”

“Orson, dear boy. We don’t stand much on formalities here,” the man replied, peering down his aquiline nose in what he probably assumed was an imperious gesture.

From the other end of the table, he could hear the rasping of Vader’s respirator as he and Palpatine spoke quietly.

“Orson, then. What can you tell me about Mara Jade Palpatine?”

Krennic took another deep sip of wine, the liquid catching the light of the musty chandelier, sending bloody fractals across the table. He closed his eyes, whether he was savouring the taste or just getting his story straight, Cassian was uncertain.

The moment stretched on and on, the light on the table shifting and moving with every shake of Krennic’s hand. The men around them shot disapproving looks, but kept their mouths shut and laughed quietly at something that Vader said.

“She was a strange girl, Mara was,” Krennic said.

A middle-aged, dark-haired woman from the other side of the table suddenly cut in, smiling at Cassian. “I must say, I don’t really agree with this new project of Sheev’s.”

He gave a dry smile. “I’m being paid for it, Miss. I don’t really have too many thoughts about it.”

The woman sniffed, while Krennic started to gulp down more wine in the corner of his vision.

“We’re not really comfortable with the idea of a chronicle about the company, no matter how great it’s become.” She stretched a hand over the table. “I’m Natasi Daala, by the way.”

Cassian took her sweaty hand in his. “Pleased to meet you, Miss Daala. And the chronicle isn’t really about the family -”

“No, it’s about Sheev and his confused little witch hunt.”

“It’s not my intention to portray anyone in a negative or untrue light -”

“Unlike the incident that got you in prison.”

“I never went to prison for what happened with the Eadu Corporation -”

“No,” she said, tapping a perfectly manicured finger on her chin. “That’s quite right. You resigned in disgrace after losing all your money on the court costs.”

A lull in the conversation washed over the table.

“While we’re here, Miss Daala, what did you know or think about Mara Jade Palpatine?”

An eye roll in response. “Nothing. I’m pretty sure she didn’t even know I existed. Far as I knew, she seemed to see the sun shining out of Padme Amidala’s arse half the time.”

“Do you know where I can find -”

Orson stepped in, sloshing wine all over his white suit. “Stupid woman, stay out of conversations that don’t involve you. We were talking something important.”

Cassian smiled, gesturing for him to keep going.

“Cold fish, that girl was,” he said, before wrapping his arms around himself and miming shivering. “Kept staring out at the lake all the time, writing something in that book of hers and vanishing out of nowhere.”

“You didn’t wonder where she was running off to?”

Krennic took another sloppy sip of wine, spilling some of it across the table. “What does it matter? She always came back. It’s not like she drowned herself or anything.”

“Do you know what she was writing about?”

He gave a shrug. “Got no idea what teenage girls write about. I don’t know, boys or something? Girl spent more time hiding out in the family boathouse than actually meeting them, so I’ve got no idea why you’re interested in that.”

Cassian took a slow sip of his wine as Krennic kept going. “You know, we all _really_ know why you’re here. Palpatine wants to take this all from me. He thinks I’m useless. He thinks that I’m tossing the company down the drain. He wants you to write that I killed that stupid girl and then it’ll all go away and -”

Vader had gotten up, pulling Krennic away from the edge of the table. “Be careful not to choke on your aspirations, Orson,” he rasped.

Orson’s flailing arms knocked over his wine glass and Cassian watched the red drip-drip-drip onto the starched white fabric of the tablecloth as his mind started to work on something.

He stood up abruptly. “This boathouse, where is it?”

  
  


\---

  
  


The boathouse turned out to be a dusty little fishing cabin tucked away in the woods that Cassian had had to walk down an overgrown trail to get to, vines and ivy growing all over the facade of the building.

Clearly no one had been here in a long time.

Cassian tried the door, the wood pitted and swollen, which rattled in the frame alarmingly. He shook it once more, trying to get the door to come loose, but it was stuck.

He turned looked behind him before pulling a little packet of lockpicks from his pocket, out of sheer force of habit.

Nothing behind him and nothing around him, except for the whistle of the wind through the leaves and the twittering of the birds above his head.

The grating sound of the metal echoed and he pushed on with a grunt, forcing the picks into the lock.

The door fell open he stepped inside, the sunlight filtering through, illuminating the dust left on the floor. His footsteps left a clear trail, the light leaving them in sharp contrast.

There was something deeply wrong about this place, and it clung to the back of his mouth like a bad taste.

It felt as though he were walking through someone’s life, trampling all over their secrets.

He kept walking through the house, making his way to the stairs, swinging a torch around to look at the rest of the house.

And then it struck him.

None of the possessions had been packed up.

The family had simply left this place in what appeared to be a hurry, the dinner plates still left out on the table and moth-eaten blankets still tossed over the armchairs.

Had it just been abandoned and left to rot?

But then why would they have left everything behind?

He ran a finger over the dusty and cracked surface of a family photograph, Mara and Palpatine’s faces staring out at the dusty living room.

He turned away from it, feeling as though he were intruding on a long-forgotten moment.

The stairs creaked beneath his feet as he made his way up, pulling a scarf over his face to try and avoid breathing in the dust.

Cassian gently pushed away the cobwebs in the entryway of the corridor, moving into the hallway upstairs.

The floor shifted slightly under his feet, but whether it was from the abandonment of the cabin to the elements or the shifting sands of his own mind, he wasn’t sure.

He pushed the first door open.

Peeling wallpaper on the walls and an old bed, moth-eaten covers still lying rumpled on them.

The walls and desk were bare.

There was something slightly wrong with this room, his eyes flickered over the scuff marks on the bedposts.

He’d seen something like that before.

But where?

He racked his mind, coming up blank.

But wherever he had seen it, something was wrong with this scene.

There was nothing to be found here and he backed out of the room slowly.

And then it came to him.

_Handcuffs._

Someone had once been handcuffed in that room for long periods of time.

Cassian opened the door to the second bedroom.

Much the same as the one previous– bare, save for the covers lying on the floor, the bedposts marked in the same way.

The floor creaked as Cassian pushed the last door open to reveal a completely different scene.

The bed was stripped bare, the mattress dank and stained.

Cassian’s footsteps were soft as he made his way deeper into what he suspected had once been Mara Jade Palpatine’s room.

What had the rooms of this place seen?

Had someone abused Palpatine’s daughter?

Had he known about it?

Had Palpatine himself abused her?

Why?

What had happened to Mara?

Was this why she had been killed?

Because she’d threatened to tell someone?

The possibilities rushed through his mind, a dark torrent of information and speculation.

The desk was completely ransacked, the papers lying as a single mass on the surface, a single dark leatherbound book sitting on top of them.

He brushed his finger over the papers, looking for any sign of mould, but they were bone dry.

Was this the book that Orson had mentioned to him over dinner?

The one that Mara had been writing in all the time?

He flipped it open, taking a quick look through its pages.

A Bible?

Palpatine had mentioned that his daughter had been quite religious before her death.

He ran his hand along the spine, taking a look at the inside cover. A tiny slip of paper fell out, which Cassian caught between his fingers.

_MAGDA 32016_

_SARA 32019_

_RJ 30112_

_RL 32027_

_MARY 32018_

What was going on?

He flipped the paper over, seeing the word “Important” scrawled in pen on the back in what appeared to be Mara’s handwriting. The word had been underlined so hard and with so much force that the pen had gone through the page.

What did it all mean?

The handcuffs, the Bible, the notes, the secrets. He could feel his mind running over with the information and he pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes to try and block out everything around him.

He opened his eyes some time later, he couldn’t say how long and found himself kneeling on the dusty floor of a dead girl’s room, her Bible clutched tight in his hand.

He tucked the Bible into the inner pocket of his coat, stumbled down the stairs and started down the long path back to the house.

 

 

 

\--

  


 

Cassian pulled his seat back from his desk in the manor house the next day after a completely fruitless attempt to find anything in the archives of the local newspapers. He rubbed his eyes against the glare of the screen.

The room he had been given was beautiful and just as well-appointed as the rest of the manor, but he was starting to regret ever taking this job. All the lies, the secrets, the duplicity,  the violence under the sheen of luxury, it was all starting to weigh on him and he suspected that Mara’s death was only the most obvious facet of it all.

He licked his lips, his mouth suddenly dry with fear.

What had Mara stumbled into?

What was everyone here capable of?

There was a bleep from the corner of the screen and a notification came up.

That would be Kay, with the results on the photographer that he had asked for.

_Hello Cassian,_

_I disagree utterly with this use of your time, but I guess people deal with unemployment in different ways. I enhanced the photo as much as physically possible (contrary to what Hollywood says, “getting rid of the fuzzies” is a lot more effort than they think)._

_I’ve found a logo on the man’s shirt collar. It’s not definitive, but there is a 94% chance that it is for the company_ Casterly Rock Photography _. They are still active in Kent, fortunately._

_Good luck trying to get evidence out of them._

_Kay Tuesso_

_PS. Mothma is angry. Something about an exodus of two thirds of the magazine’s advertisers. She may wish to bring it up with you._

He smiled slightly at Kay’s blunt manner, noting Casterly Rock Photography on his next to-do list to call and see if anyone could give him the old negatives, before opening up an email to thank Kay for his help.

Maybe this could clarify what Mara had seen just before she’d disappeared.

He rubbed his eyes and opened up google again, starting to plug in the numbers and letters that Mara had left in her bible.

No results.

Just a series of zip codes for a group of suburbs in the United States.

And those names.

What did they mean?

What could it have had to do with Mara Jade Palpatine’s death?

He opened up google one more time, this time typing ‘Padme Amidala,’ Darth Vader’s ex-wife.

The results page was filled with the news of her charity work and political activism in America and he made a note about that on the picture of her on the photograph.

There was a tinny buzz from his phone and he picked up. “Hello, this is Cassian Andor.”

“Hi, this is Inspector Alexsandr Kallus. Mister Palpatine talked to me and said that you had some questions?”

Kallus.

Cassian knew the name, looking at the list of names tacked on the wall next to his desk.

Kallus.

Oh. That was the original inspector on the case.

But why had Palpatine asked him to call?

He pulled over the photo album and a pencil, flipping to the pages that showed the accident which had occurred just before Mara’s disappearance. “Yes, this is Cassian Andor. I have a few questions for you.”

“Of course.”

“What can you tell me about the accident and Mara Jade’s disappearance?”

There was a long pause on the other end of the line, then Kallus sighed. “I was informed of the incident at precisely 10:19pm over the telephone, at which point I set out to the manor at Oare. Once I’d had a look at the missing girl’s room -”

“I’m sorry, when did you reach the manor house?” Why had Kallus been so specific about the time? Was he reading from some sort of script?

Another pause.

Cassian’s pencil hovered over a piece of paper at the ready.

“I - would assume that I reached the manor after 11:30pm at some point.”

“So you were there after the accident occurred.”

“ - Yes, yes. I was.”

Cassian tapped the end of his pencil on the desk. “What can you tell me about your first impressions of Mara and of the family?”

Kallus huffed. “What can I say that you haven’t realised? It was a strange case. Palpatine was, naturally, rather upset at his daughter’s disappearance and demanded that we send out patrol boats and search teams immediately.”

 _Why had Palpatine_ really _been so insistent on sending out search parties? Did he know about what happened in the boat house? What did Mara know?_ “And what time did that happen?”

There was the sound of flipping pages. “Around 12:30 in the morning. We organised search parties to go out and search the area near the manor.”

“That late at night?”

Another exhale over the phone line. “Palpatine pushed to get the search teams out on the water and around the manor house. You know, as any parent would.” There was a pause. “You don’t seriously suspect a father of murdering his own daughter, do you?”

Cassian let out a deep breath, resting his forehead in his hand briefly.

_What was he supposed to say to this man?_

He stayed silent instead, trying to form words to explain what he wanted out of Kallus.

_Secrets and lies everywhere._

_Who to trust?_

He leaned back and laughed gently, sardonically. “Can you tell me anything else about the search? Did you find anything?”

“We searched for days. Eventually, I was forced to call it off. Honestly? I wasn’t really surprised when we didn’t find a body.”

“Yeah?”

“It’s a big estate, it’s got water and woods and half of it is deserted. You can’t just go running around digging up the entirety of the Kent marshes. It wasn’t an accident, Mister Andor. But it was - strange.”

“Strange how?” His pencil stilled and Cassian sat in his chair with rapt curiosity.

“There wasn’t any motive that I could find. I don’t know if it was spontaneous or if it was planned or whether it was to try and cover up something that she knew about.”

His eyes flicked towards the piece of paper he had found in the bible, which sat on his desk and taunted him. “She was with some friends that day, did they tell you anything?”

Another sigh. “I spoke to Leia Organa, the daughter of Darth Vader. Her brother wasn’t there - he was at a summer camp in America at the time. But I got nothing out of her. Mara told her that she wasn't feeling well. She left early. But she also said Mara kept secrets from them. The main thing I learned after talking to Leia is that teenage girls are complicated.”

“Do you think she could have fallen and drowned or something along those lines?”

“The currents around the manor aren’t that strong. I would know.”

Cassian licked his lips. “How would you know that, Mister Kallus?”

There was a pause. “I was there the year before Mara was killed, Mister Andor. I got called out for the drowning of a close friend of Palpatine, Maul. His body didn’t drift more than ten meters before it was found. Someone killed that girl, Mister Andor.”

He sat back in his chair, looking at the piece of paper, before taking a deep breath. “I’m afraid that I haven’t been completely honest with you, Mister Kallus. I found a note hidden in Mara’s bible with a series of names and numbers written on it. I can’t make either heads or tails of it.”

“Were the names Magda, Sara, RJ, RL and Mary?”

His pencil stopped its incessant drumming on the table. “How did you know that?”

“They were in Mara’s address book as well. On the last page. They weren’t alphabetised or anything, which is why I flagged them as strange. The numbers don’t go anywhere, don’t bother trying to follow them. They were just a bunch of local phone numbers, if I remember correctly.”

Cassian let out a breath. He’d been so close. But those names and those numbers.

They had to mean something.

And how could Kallus have known exactly what the names were?

“Sorry, Mister Kallus. I didn’t mean to pry too much. Thank you so much for your insights.”

A laugh from the other end of the line. “It’s ok. I call this my _Rebecca_ case.”

“I’m sorry, your Rebecca case?”

Another laugh. “It’s from way before Mara was ever born. But there was this guy at the station, his name was Windu. He kept taking out these files for Rebecca’s case year after year and he could never let the thing go.”

“Was it a missing girl case?”

“No. But that’s not the point of this, Mister Andor. What I’m saying is that these sorts of unsolved cases weigh really heavily on a policeman. You obsess about them and you can never really let them go.”

He licked his lips. This call had produced more questions than actual answers. “Thank you for your time, Mister Kallus. Have a good day.”

He sat still in his chair, the book of photographs and Mara’s bible still sitting on his desk as the dial tone sounded. 

He sighed and turned back to the photographs on his laptop, arranging them into a slideshow. The pale faces in them stared back at him and he turned on the television for some background noise. Maybe they’d be able to tell him something.

He fell asleep like that, hunched over his computer, the photographs dissolving in and out on his screen, Mara Jade Palpatine’s face looking out at the world, her terror at whatever she’d seen forever written on her face. 

When he woke up, it was dark out, the rain beating hard against the windows, leaving tiny streaks of light in their wake as they reflected the light from the grounds outside. The news was playing in the background and he took a look at it.

PETROCHEMICAL MANUFACTURER EMPIRE ENTERPRISES TAKES CONTROLLING STAKE IN STRUGGLING ALLIANCE MAGAZINE. 

On the news he could see Mon Mothma and her perfectly pressed newsready face talking with a reporter. “We made a serious mistake last year, and we regret it, but this move will be the first in -”

Cassian fumbled to turn the television off, not wanting to see any reminders of his failure with the magazine. 

Palpatine had honoured the deal that he had made, but it didn't mean that he needed to have the reason he had originally come to Oare thrown back in his face. 

The image of the boathouse came back to him. 

_Could he trust Palpatine?_  


He sat upright and cracked his neck, grabbing his coat and walking outside into the rain. 

He was in the rain for God knew how long, letting it beat down on his head as he walked towards the town of Faversham and thought– 

What did he  _ know _ ?

He knew that Mara had found something out before the day she died, and she had hidden the information in both her address book and her Bible. 

He knew that the roads had been closed on the day of her death, so the person who killed her must have been at the manor.

The picture of Palpatine wearing the Nazi pin flashed into his mind.

The family was hiding something.

Probably many somethings, if his suspicions were correct. 

What had Palpatine known about the goings-on at the boathouse?

Mara had been scared and surprised at the Bonfire Night parade on the day of her death, but his inquiries with Casterly Rock Photography would have to wait for the morning.

The water started to pour down his face as he walked.

Something about the photographs that he had been reviewing was strange. 

Something about the background of one of them. 

He had seen something, he knew it. 

He shoved his hands deeper into his pockets and kept walking, before lights started to flash in the distance, revealing itself to be an ambulance, rushing down the road towards the manor. 

The sirens wailed as they passed him, echoing over the empty landscape.

_ What the hell? _

Cassian wiped the water out of his face and started to run in the direction of the ambulance. 

He reached the manor out of breath just as the ambulance was starting to pull out, and he saw Krennic climbing into a Range Rover, looking more flustered than he had ever seen him. 

“What’s going on?” he puffed out, his breath a fog hanging in the air between them.

“We were just talking and he started rubbing his arm, saying that it hurt. Now they’re saying that he’ll have to go to the hospital. If you’ll excuse me, Mister Andor.” He slammed the door shut.

The Range Rover pulled out of the driveway at a breakneck pace, Cassian staring after it. 

  
  
  


\--

  
  
  


Cassian was sitting at the empty dining table in the manor now that the place had emptied itself out, staring at a set of photographs from the accident spread out over its huge expanse and flipping through the dog-eared pages of Mara’s bible.

What would happen to him if Palpatine died?

Would his chosen successor have the will to continue an investigation that would undoubtedly dig up all the company’s secrets?

_ Maybe it would be better if he died,  _ he thought, an image of the beds in the boathouse flashing into his mind. 

A magnifying glass rested on a blurry photograph of the accident, the manor house in accidental focus behind it. 

He’d hastily drawn a large floor plan of the manor and set out a number of photographs of the various family members to no great avail before he’d given up. Currently, he was looking through Mara’s markings in the book of Leviticus when a knock came from the closed door.

He flipped the book closed before calling out, “Come in!” to reveal Tarkin, as tall and imposing as he had been the first day Cassian had come to Oare. 

“Can I have another one of those?” he said, pointing at the food and drinks Cassian had set out for himself. 

“A sandwich?”

“No.” .

Ah. The scotch. Cassian poured the two of them a healthy measure as Tarkin sat down, his back as straight as a ruler. 

The other man took an appreciative sip, before the silence surrounded them again, broken only by the crackling of the flames in the fireplace. 

“The good news is that he’ll live.” 

Cassian took a sip of his own drink, letting it burn on the way down. “And the bad news?”

“His condition is quite poor. He is in the ICU, but we’ll have to watch and wait to see what happens now.”

Another sip of whiskey. 

The flames crackled merrily at the other end of the room. 

“So what does happen now?”

Tarkin took a sip of his own drink. “I know that Mister Palpatine offered to pay you for the entire year, and I’m willing to continue those payments.”

“And the investigation into Mara’s death?”

Tarkin threw a dismissive look at the research spread out over the table. “We both know nothing’s going to come of it, Mister Andor.”

Cassian bit his tongue. 

Did he tell him or not?

He took another sip of whiskey before he spoke slowly. “That might not be entirely true.”

Tarkin’s sharp gaze snapped over to him. “What do you mean?”

“I need to know who I’ll report to if something happens to Palpatine.”

“You’ll report to me, of course. Now. What did you find?” Tarkin said, looking deeply impatient.

Right.

He took another sip, letting the moment drag out. “I’m not telling you what I’ve found yet. I need some time to check it out.”

There was a look of barely concealed desire and ambition in Tarkin’s eyes. “No you don’t.”

Cassian planted both his hands firm on the table. “Yes I do. The last time I reported on something without proper fact-checking I lost everything. I need a research assistant. Can you authorise that?”

The glint in Tarkin’s eyes didn’t fade. “Yes, I do believe that I can do that.”

“Do you know a good one?”

There was a pause between the two of them. 

“Before you were brought on, Mister Palpatine asked me to do a background check on you. I can ask the woman who did it to come on to this project.” The last word was spat out with the sort of derision normally reserved for politicians. 

Cassian’s mind started to flicker through the deepest recesses of his life. What could that woman have found?

He paused, licking his lips. “I want to read it.”

“Are you sure, the file was quite -”

“I want to read it.”

Tarkin sighed. “I’ll have someone bring it to you in the morning.”

  
  
  
  


\--

  
  
  


 

Tarkin really hadn’t lied when he’d said that the woman (One Jyn Erso, if the name on the front page of the report was correct) who’d done the background check had been thorough. 

He flipped through the pages.

She was quite good at his job, he mused as he looked through a complete breakdown of his financial status and the projected damage that the court fees would do to it. The report was devastatingly precise about the financial reports of Alliance magazine as well. Palpatine knew how shaky everything was when he’d hired him.

_ Looking for an easy target _ .

The exact details of the case had merely been summarised, but it went into enough detail to suggest that the woman who’d written this had been a spectator in court at the time. She’d also noted his refusal to make any comments or burn any sources at the time of trial. _ Smart. _

He kept flipping through until his eyes widened. 

The woman had summarised precisely what would happen after the trial with regards to both himself and the magazine. Also included was a passage from the press release she predicted would be put out after his resignation as editor.

But it wasn’t the one that had been submitted to the press at all. It was similar, but not exactly the same as the one that had been released to the public.

He flipped back to the beginning of the report, looking at the date. 

The report as a whole had been dated to three days before his resignation from the magazine.  _ Impossible _ . At that time, the press release had only existed in one place in the entire world. 

Not even Kay or Mothma or Draven had had copies, although they had all spoken to him about it. It had only existed on his MacBook, not his computer at work, and he never printed it out.

He pulled off his glasses and stared at the accusatory pages of the report before he walked out the front door of the manor and stood in the cool breeze of the countryside, letting the information wash over him.

There was only one explanation for this.

“You’ve been in my computer, Miss Erso. You’re a goddamn hacker.”


	2. The Girl Who Played With Fire

A handful of days later found Cassian standing on the doorstep of a surprisingly nice London townhouse in the cold light of day fruitlessly ringing the doorbell and waiting for his hacker to emerge.

What had he imagined as this mysterious Jyn Erso’s home? Some dank and squalid hacker lair?

He could feel his grip on the bag of pastries start to loosen, along with the pile of paperwork he had tucked under his arm and he set both down on the ground before he pressed the doorbell again. 

This was a stupid idea. Turning up at the doorstep of a hacker with a bag of breakfast pastries to ask her to join his research project?

From behind the door, he heard a shuffle of feet and the telltale jingle of keys and he instinctively straightened, then the door opened to reveal a young woman staring at him in complete confusion.

She looked scruffy, as though she’d thrown on her clothes in a hurry, her hair a mess and the bags under her eyes as blue as a bruise. 

He licked his lips and tried not to stare at the tattoos that inked their way across her neck. “Good morning, Miss Erso. Can I come in?”

She looked at him warily, blocking his entrance to the house with her body. “I’m not Miss Erso. What do you want?”

He shuffled his things around to hold up the pile of paperwork. “Is this not the home of Jyn Erso? I’d like to offer her a job.”

The woman cocked her head, her eyes roving around, before giving him a thin-lipped smile. “You’d be the journalist, right? The one from the news?”

Cassian gave a strained smile. “That would be me. Is there a Jyn Erso living here at all?”

“Is she expecting you?”

He shook his head. “I was hoping to talk to her about her work -”

She raised her eyebrows and he pressed on. “I was hired as a consultant by Empire Enterprises on a cold case, and I need her to help me solve -”

“You’re not welcome here,” she said, her voice brittle.

_ She’s trying too hard. _

Every bone in his body told him that this was the right address and that it was the right woman.

He could see the door about to close and he wedged his foot into the gap. “Look! You left my past out of the dossier you wrote - you know I’m telling the truth when I say I need your help.”

She opened the door a little more. Cassian breathed deeply, taking his foot out of the door frame and relaxing a little, before -

The door slammed shut in his face, the locks sliding into place with a deep finality and Cassian groaned, dropping the bag of pastries and rubbing his face with his hand. 

In less than an hour, he was sitting in a Pret-A-Manger at the nearest Tube station, his phone in hand and his laptop in front of him, trying to explain to Kay exactly what had gone wrong. 

“Are you sure that you got the location of her home right?

He took a sip of his tea, wishing to all the gods it was spiked. “I don’t know! Did you get the right address?”

There was a puff of static as Kay let out another of his long-suffering sighs. “Yes, Cassian. I looked in the records for London. There was only one Jyn Erso that I could find, and her address was at precisely the location that I texted to -”

“Are you sure you got the right address?”

“He definitely got the right address,” came a voice from his left and he wheeled about, spilling half his tea on himself. The young woman from before was standing there, a men’s messenger bag slung over her shoulder and the top of a tattoo visible above the neckline of her jacket.

His mouth opened and closed like a fish for a moment, while the woman stood there unsmiling, one hand buried in the pocket of her jacket. 

Something in her expression shifted, and she softened slightly before sticking out her right hand, the stark black band of a tattoo standing out against her pale skin. “Jyn Erso. Nice to meet you.”

He still held his phone in his hand and he quickly brought it to his ear. “I’ll call you back,” he stammered over Kay’s objections before taking her hand. “Cassian Andor. Nice to put a face to the name.”

She still stood there awkwardly and he shifted his chair around to look at her properly. Her right hand was now wrapped around the strap of her bag and she seemed to be resisting the urge to shuffle her feet.

He made an aborted gesture at the chairs on either side of him, and she cocked her head, much as she had earlier, before she hopped up on one of them, her hands flat on the table and her bag still on her shoulder as if she were ready to run at a moment’s notice. 

“Is there any point in asking how you found my location?”

She shrugged. “Is there any point in asking why you tried to barge into my house as if you owned the place?”

He looked up from where he was mopping up the tea stain on his shirt with a napkin, his eyes askance. “Why didn’t you let me in?”

A dismissive wave of her hand. “None of your business.”

“Actually it’s all of my business. Isn’t that how this game works?” He tossed the napkins aside before meeting her eyes fully. “Speaking of which, I know how you do it. I know your secret.”

Her left hand tightened on the strap of her bag, another black band around it, identical to the one on her other wrist. Her eyes were sharp, staring into him as if she were trying to work out how much he knew. There was a long moment of silence. 

“I don’t like guests coming unannounced,” she said.

Cassian took a sip of his tea while trying to resist the urge to smile. “Honestly? I wouldn’t either.”

“What are you smiling at?” she ground out. 

“I’m sorry, I’m just thinking that we’re both awful at this first impressions business,” he said, taking another sip of his tea. “You’ll just have to think of this as revenge for your poking around in my life. But I’m sorry if I frightened you earlier. Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” she said. 

“Good. I’m not here to make trouble for you.”

Her eyes snapped up. “If you even lay a finger on me, I’ll do more than frighten you.”

Given that she looked to be about five foot two, that didn’t seem like much of a threat, but her expression was fierce enough that he backed off. He smiled, pushing the bag of pastries from earlier over to her. 

She shook her head and he helped himself to one. “I’m sorry about all the chaos, but -” his voice trailed off as he noticed her smile. “If you want me to get lost, just tell me, but, oh -”

She grinned. “Cat got your tongue?”

He shook his head, trying to get his thoughts in order. “I’m sorry, but four days ago I didn’t even know you existed. And then I read your report on me. By the way– it wasn’t entertaining reading.”

Jyn gave another shrug. “It wasn’t supposed to be entertaining.”

“When I write something, I try to entertain the reader.”

“The board of Eadu Laboratories wasn’t too entertained.”

_ Jesus Christ, would he never get out from under that scandal? _

He took a bite of his danish, letting the sweetness sit on his tongue. The clowning was over, apparently. “I spoke to your boss earlier. He said that you only take the jobs that you find interesting, which I guess I find vaguely flattering. He also said that you’re the one to go to for jobs that he called ‘sensitive’ and I call ‘illegal’, since that’s what it’s called when you hack into someone’s computer.”

Jyn was staring at him, before she reached out and grabbed a pastry of her own, biting down. “I guess when Fleet Street does it, it’s called journalism.”

Cassian ignored the shot at him and kept going. “I have a bit of a problem right now. Tarkin, the guy that you did the research for, did he ever tell you what it was going to be used for?”

A shake of the head. 

“Well, Tarkin and his boss have given me a freelance job and I need your help with it. It’s without doubt the most bizarre assignment I’ve ever undertaken. But first, I need to know that I can trust you, Jyn.”

“So you’re acting as the lapdog of a powerful organisation and you want me to get involved with it too?”

He sighed. “Look. It’s not my choice. But I only answer to myself. I report what I want to Palpatine himself when he asks for it.”

Jyn looked like she was trying to hold back an outburst and he ploughed on. “I was brought on by the family, and they know that I’m hiring you, but there’s more to this story than the company. I have the opportunity to make a terrible wrong right.”

“There’s a lot of wrongs that the company has committed.”

He shook his head. “Jyn. You won’t answer to the company. You’ll just be helping me. As soon as you find out this information, you can go back to whatever you were doing in London.”

Something relented in her expression and she gave a noncommittal shrug. “What did you find?”

He rubbed his face. “I’ve stumbled on secret after secret after secret with this case, Jyn - can I call you that?” At her nod, he kept going. “But I’m not sure who I can trust, especially in light of what I’ve found out about the company in question. So I’m asking again. Can I trust you?”

“Trust goes both ways.”

He smiled at her, running a hand through his hair. 

God, it was barely midday and he already felt as though he had run a marathon. “I'm not going to do anything about the hacking. What I'm going to do is tell you a story. If it entertains you, maybe you'll decide to help me research it further. If not, I’ll leave you be and we’ll forget that this ever happened.

Jyn reached forward to grab another pastry. “What kind of research are you after?”

“I’m trying to catch a murderer.”

  
  
  
  


\---

  
  
  
  


In what felt like the blink of an eye, they were sitting in Jyn’s living room, Cassian perched awkwardly on the sofa as Jyn stood behind him, talking to someone he assumed was her boss on the phone.  

While she did, he took the opportunity to stand up and started to surreptitiously scope out her home. 

Her furniture seemed to be well-worn and good quality, not the sort of IKEA stuff that one would expect from a young professional, with a state-of-the-art Powerbook sitting on her desk. He started to poke at the pile of papers on her desk, littered with handwriting that appeared to be a cross between chicken scratch and Egyptian hieroglyphs. 

“It’s me...sorry...yes...it was turned off...I know, he wants to hire me, he’s standing in the middle of my office…” she said, before raising her voice. “Saw, I’m tired and my head hurts. Please, no more games, did you OK this job or not?...Thanks.”

He had been idly musing on why a hacker would have so much in the way of paper and books in her home, and all in what appeared to be foreign languages too when Jyn suddenly grabbed the book (some sort of thesis on crystallography) out of his hand. She sank onto the sofa, rubbing her temples before he joined her. 

“Alright, the rules of this are going to be simple. Nothing that you discuss with me will be shared with anyone else. There will be a contract which says that I, as an independent contractor, will pledge confidentiality.”

Cassian found himself nodding along to her words before she put a single finger into the air. “You’ve showed me a whole load of stuff from the case, but I want to know absolutely everything before I agree to this. Now one more thing. You said we had to track down a murderer? What do you need a researcher for?”

She was asking for a hook– a reason for her to be there. 

Did he trust her with what he’d found out?

He hesitated for a moment before he started pulling his notes out from his bag, laying them out on the coffee table between them. He gently pulled the slip of paper out of the Bible and held it out in front of her. 

“I need a researcher because I went to the boathouse owned by the Palpatine family and I found signs that someone had been handcuffed to the beds there.” 

Jyn’s face went bloodless at his words and her hand started to clench and unclench. He held out  the piece of paper with the names on it. “I found this in Mara’s room at the boathouse and I need to know what it means. I think she knew something about what was going on at the company.”

Across from him, he could see her eyes narrow before she grabbed the paper from between his fingers. “What’s Mara Jade Palpatine’s death got to do with the Catholics?”

“I’m sorry, Catholics?”

Her finger tapped the Bible. “The paper you found. Why’s it got numbers from the Pentateuch on it with all the names?”

Wait, the numbers were all Bible verses?

Cassian grabbed the Bible, flicking through the pages quickly to the third book in it, Leviticus.

As he did so, he could almost feel a cold chill come over him. 

_ And he shall cut it into pieces, with its head and its fat, and the priest shall arrange them on the wood that is on the fire on the altar. _

Leviticus 1:12.

He knew he’d heard something about that somewhere.

He could feel his hand instinctively reaching for his phone, feeling it dial, moving through a daze. 

Jyn was looking at him in alarm, her face pale. “What’s going on?”

A man’s voice came on the other end of the line. “Hi, this is Inspector Alexsandr -”

“Mister Kallus, I need to know something right now. That Rebecca case you told me about. What was her last name?”

There was a long pause.

“I think I’ve found something. But I need to know this now. What was her last name?”

“This was back in the 40s, this has nothing to do with -”

“This has everything to do with Mara. I need to know.”

“Umm, let me see - her name was Rebecca Jacobson.”

RJ.

The pieces started clicking into place.

RJ.

Leviticus. 

“How did she die?”

“What does this have to do with anything?”

“Just tell me!”

“Ok, ok. Calm down. Rebecca Jacobson was decapitated and her arms were cut off. We found her body burned in her own garden.”

_ And he shall cut it into pieces, with its head and its fat, and the priest shall arrange them on the wood that is on the fire on the altar. _

Mara had known. 

How had she known?

“I’m going to have to call you back, Alexsandr,” he said over the other man’s words. 

Those words were wind, rushing straight through him.

RJ.

Leviticus.

The other names. 

Oh God, the other names. 

There was a sharp poke in his side, and he opened his eyes to see Jyn leaning towards him, her green eyes wide with concern. “Are you alright, Cassian?”

He shook his head, holding out his phone mutely. “I think I know what those numbers mean.”

He took a deep breath. “So I’ve identified the RJ on the list - her name was Rebecca Jacobson and she died in the 40s. If I’m right, then there are going to be four more victims - Magda -” he said, a large mug of tea in his hand and the watchful eye of Jyn on him.

“- Sarah, Mary and RL, yes?” Jyn filled in, distinctly looking slightly pale once he’d shown her the verse in question. “You think that they were all murdered?”

“What I think is that we are looking for—if the other numbers and initials also prove to be shorthand for four more killings—a murderer who was active in the fifties and maybe also in the sixties. And somehow, they have a connection to Mara Jade Palpatine.”

“So you want me to find the other women?” she said, scratching her neck, the tattoos on her wrist utterly stark against her skin.

_ Handcuffs _ , Cassian realised. _ She’s tattooed handcuffs on herself _ . 

The scene of the bedposts in the boathouse flashed in his mind again and he shook his head, trying to focus. 

His eyes alighted on the screen of Jyn’s laptop, the headlines from Rebecca Jacobson’s murder in black and white there. “I was only brought on to solve one murder, but I don’t know what this could have to do with Mara Jade.”

Jyn shrugged. “I mean, I can find them for you, but I might need to run around all of England for it - I couldn’t find much in the Oare newspapers about any murders.”

Silence fell over them. Jyn sat on the floor expressionless for so long that Cassian wasn’t sure what was going on in her mind. 

“I’ll do it,” she said, her jaw set. “But you might want to go home. I’ll find you when I’ve got what you want.”

Cassian opened his mouth to ask how, then closed it again. Stupid question.

He was out to the door before he looked back at her, where she was hunched over her laptop, face lit up by the blue light of her screen. 

  
  
  


\--

 

 

 

His home hadn’t changed much in the month since his departure to Oare, the boxes of his belongings from the Alliance office still stacked on his desk. 

A small and deeply masochistic part of himself told himself to open those boxes again, to pore over his notes about Eadu Laboratories, that he could make it all right and undo what had happened. 

He picked up a small stack of mail on his desk and flicked idly through it.

That would have been Kay’s doing. 

The fact that they were sorted by date also seemed to have been his doing. 

He looked at the piece of paper taped to the table and grinned instinctively.

_ Cassian, I have no idea what you have been up to, but I hope you’re enjoying it. I took the liberty of cancelling your utilities and subscriptions. I’m sure you understand.  _

_ Enjoy the glories of the English countryside in all their muddy joy. _

He looked around at the remnants of his life in London, the dusty and empty shelves and the reminders of his failure everywhere. 

He grabbed something out of his nightstand, the gun which he had never given back when his time with the army had ended no matter how much he ached to get away from the war. Until this point in time, he’d always thought of it as an uncomfortable reminder of what he’d survived. 

He tucked it away into his bags. 

  
  
  
  


\---

  
  
  
  


It was the small things that didn’t quite add up when Cassian got back to Oare the day after; details that he would have missed if he wasn’t so on edge. Some of his papers weren’t quite as evenly stacked as he remembered, a binder of notes wasn’t quite flush with the shelf edge, his drawer closed all the way instead of slightly ajar like he’d left it. 

Someone had been in his rooms. 

He had locked the door, but there wasn’t much that could be done when he was staying in someone else’s manor house.

Cassian started to pace. Someone had been in his rooms and they had gone through his notes and his binders. 

He had taken the Bible, the verses and his laptop with him when he’d gone to London, meaning that there was little chance that they could have found traces of the newest developments in the case.

The binders were just part of the collection that Palpatine had given him. There were no new materials in there.

The notebooks would simply read like code to those unfamiliar with it. But what was to say that whoever had broken into his rooms wasn’t part of initiated. 

Who could have done it?

Palpatine was in the hospital. 

Orson Krennic. Vader. 

Natasi Daala, the dark-haired woman from the company dinner. He’d seen her while he’d been driving towards the manor house. 

Tarkin? Cassian had only told him the barest details, but the man had seemed ambitious and greedy enough to potentially break into his rooms for information or blackmail on his enemies.

He rubbed his temples.

Who could have talked? How many of the relatives and family members could have realised that he was on the verge of a breakthrough in the case?

Cassian spent a sleepless night tossing about in his bed, looking through his belongings to see if he had been bugged or if someone else had tried to hack his computer. 

If Jyn had done it once, what was stopping Palpatine from hiring someone to do it again?

In the cold light of day, he rose and drove over to the hospital, where he was met in the ward corridor with the strange tableau that Kallus would have been met with forty years ago. All his very same primary suspects - Krennic, Tarkin, Daala, Vader, all arguing  _ sotto voce _ with each other. 

He took a deep breath. “How’s Palpatine doing?”

Tarkin disentangled himself from the group and shook his head. “He’s about to be operated on - he has blockages in his coronary arteries. So it’s up to the family to decide what to do with him - whether to resuscitate or not, and as you can see, they’re not particularly good at making decisions.”

“Have you talked to him lately?”

Daala had broken off from the rest of the group by this point and was staring Cassian directly in the face. “I don’t care what Palpatine thinks of you. You aren’t part of this anymore. Pack your bags and get out of here now.”

“Natasi -,” Tarkin said. 

“ - What are you saying about it?” she snapped. “We all know that you’re his personal gargoyle, but what happens when he’s gone? Haven’t we got enough issues here without you dredging up any more?”

Tarkin’s voice was cold as ice. “Actually, Miss Daala, Mister Andor works directly for Mister Palpatine.”

“And where is he now?”

“We should put this all to a vote! We’ve all got a say in this!” Krennic’s voice was nasal and had the twang of a slight Australian accent. 

Vader’s respirator hissed in the background. “Don’t be an idiot, Krennic.”

“It’s a family and company decision, like all the others!”

Tarkin took Cassian to the side, lowering his voice. “How did it go in London?”

Cassian licked his lips, uneasy with the thought of having his every movement approved by this man.  “She accepted the job,” Cassian said, studiously ignoring Miss Daala lighting a cigarette and staring daggers at him from the corner of his eye. He handed Tarkin a pile of paperwork from his bag. “Her boss wanted her to sign a formal contract for the job first though.”

Tarkin pulled out a pair of glasses and started meticulously reading through the contract. “She’s very expensive, Mister Andor.”

“She’s the best. And I’m sure that Palpatine can afford it.”

He took a pen out of his pocket and scrawled a signature over the last page. “You are rather lucky that I’m signing this while Palpatine’s still alive, Mister Andor. Do remember to put this in the postbox on your way home.”

Daala’s voice echoed down the corridor at him. “Go back to London. When we want a false chronicle of the family written by a libelist, we know who to call.”

  
  
  
  


\---

  
  
  


 

The afternoon five days later found Cassian sitting in his rooms with Orson Krennic and a large bottle of wine, Krennic’s demeanour even more on edge. It hadn’t been planned, Krennic had walked into his room earlier with the wine and Cassian was racing to keep up with the twisting ways of Krennic’s mind. 

Krennic took a clumsy sip of the wine. “The company is completely impossible. No agreement on anything, no recognition for anything I do right…” he said, his voice trailing off into an alcohol-laden haze. 

He sniffed loudly, wiping his nose on his sleeve. “Natasi hates me - she wants to take over.”

Cassian leaned forward. “Why would she want that?”

“It’s between her and Palpatine. But she’s always trying to get closer to him and Vader, trying to suck up to them -”

“Yeah? When did she come onto the scene?”

Krennic shrugged, spilling wine onto his shirt as he tried to take another sip. “Can’t really remember. Prob’ly round the same time as me. One of the strays, you get me?”

“Strays?”

A cough. “He collects us, you know. Finds kids that he reckons got ‘potential’ and takes them for apprentices, whatever the fuck that means.”

The crisp vowels of Krennic’s accent started slurring and shifting into an Australian accent. Cassian leaned forward, watching him lose his control. 

“Who collects you?"

Krennic looked him in the eye, before shrugging. “Palpatine, who else?”

_ Just like Mara. _

_ Why would Palpatine collect so many strays? _

Cassian licked his lips. “What does he do with you?”

Krennic gave him a baleful glare, before coughing again and taking another swig. “Teaches us stuff, I guess. Packs us off to the posh tosspot schools once he finds us and then packages us up with a big red bow when it’s time to get involved with the family business.”

“Where does he find you all?” Cassian asked. 

A shrug. “Found me ‘cause my folks moved here for the work when I was a kid. Paid them a couple grand to get his mitts on me, if you can believe it.”

Cassian furrowed his brows.

_ What was Palpatine up to? _

Krennic took another gulp of the wine, a few drops spilling on his shirt. “Only a couple grand. That’s all I was worth to them.”

“Do you know why he would collect so many strays like you?”

“Wouldn’t know. Likes to see us turn from kids with potential to the greatest leaders in history, he said.”

“And was Mara’s upbringing like that too? She was his daughter, after all.”

A clumsy shrug. “Don’t know. Was at Cambridge when she went up in smoke. Had to study with all the tosspots there. And rowing. Palps was really big on the rowing thing.”

Outside, the windows rattled with the sound of a motorbike. 

“Cambridge? That’s quite prestigious, is it not?”

Krennic sniffed again. His accent was growing stronger with every word. “It’s a lot for a boy from Cunnamulla out in the Never-Never, you’re sayin’. Too much.” He took a swig and glared. “You’re just like the rest. You don’t think I’m good enough, you don’t think I can run -”

There was a brief knock before the door swung open to reveal Jyn, standing there in a leather jacket and heavy boots, the handcuff tattoos on her wrists and the bird on her neck fully visible, a stark contrast to the Louis XIV furniture and airy lightness of the house.

He stared her, dumbstruck, before recovering and darting over to her. “What are you doing here?” he hissed. 

Krennic visibly gaped at her, sloshing the remainder of the wine in his glass onto himself.

Out of the corner of his eye, Cassian could see Jyn stiffen and her eyes widen. 

She knew Krennic, he realised. She knew him and she was afraid of him.

Cassian got out of his seat to stand next to Jyn, smiling at Krennic. “Jyn, this is Orson Krennic, Mister Krennic, this is -”

“My name’s not important, if you want anything to do with me, talk to Cassian,” she snapped, walking past Krennic to dump her heavy bag onto the table. 

By now, Krennic had the wine bottle in hand and was stumbling closer to Jyn. “You look familiar,” he slurred, before Cassian pulled Krennic’s arm over his shoulders and started to walk him towards the door. 

By the time he’d found someone to get Krennic home safely and stumbled back up the stairs to his suite, Jyn was in the midst of unpacking– her laptop, charger and a few changes of clothes laid out on the sofa. 

Was she going to be staying here for the rest of the investigation?

“How do you know Orson Krennic?”

Jyn shot him a look. “I saw pictures of him in the news.”

“You seemed afraid of him.”

Her eyes were sharp. “I’m not afraid of anyone. And my past is my own business.” 

“The past is my business when we’re trying to -”

She turned back to her bag, pulling out her own dog-eared Bible. “If you want to know about the job you actually hired me for, I found the women you wanted me to find. And five more that I think Mara missed.”

_ Five more? _

Cassian stared, his previous questions dying on his lips, but she had opened up her own laptop, opening up a series of police reports and crime scene photographs. 

“You were right, Cassian. Rebecca was the first case. The next case is Mary Holmberg, prostitute in Manchester, murdered in 1954. Leviticus verse 20, line 18.”

He flipped through the Bible. "If a man lies with a woman having her sickness, he has made naked her fountain and she has uncovered the fountain of her blood,” he said, trying to wrack his brains for a connection.

Jyn took a deep breath from where her eyes were fixed on her laptop. “She was raped and stabbed, but the cause of death was suffocation with a sanitary napkin.”

Cassian felt all the blood leave his face. 

A silence descended over them before the clicking of laptop keys interrupted it. 

“RL. Her name was Rachel Linklater, murdered in 1957. Cleaning lady and part-time fortune teller. Found tied up with a clothesline, gagged, raped and her head was crushed with a decorative rock from her backyard. Leviticus 20:27.”

The pages of the Bible rustled.

Jyn’s voice was shaky as she kept going. “A woman who is a medium or sorcerer shall be put to death by stoning.”

Cassian swallowed thickly. “Jesus Christ, this is disgusting.”

Jyn brought up the next photographs. “It gets worse. Sara Whitman. 1964. Daughter of a vicar. Found tied to her bed, raped and died in the fire that burned down her house. Leviticus -”

“21:9. The daughter of any priest, who profanes herself by playing the harlot, profanes herself and shall be burned with -”

“Magda Schoenbruck. 1960.” Jyn cut him off, bringing up the photo of a dead woman and cow on her screen. “Found dead in her barn and stabbed with farm tools. A cow was found in the next stall, its throat slit, with her blood on it and its blood on her.”

His mouth started moving of its own accord. “Leviticus 20:16. If a woman lies with any beast, you shall kill the woman and the beast, their blood is upon -”

Jyn cut him off, her voice rising in volume and getting faster. “Leah Pearson. 1962.”

More pictures came on the screen. Cassian clenched his fingers and felt his body tense, feeling his throat start to close over. 

“Found by her sister in their pet shop. Raped, beaten and stabbed to death. The killer also let out all the animals and smashed all the aquariums.” Jyn took a deep breath, her hand clenching and unclenching at her side “Leviticus 26:21/22.”

Cassian tried to flip through the pages, but Jyn kept going.

What the hell was all this?

“Liv Rossi, 1960. Runaway. Raped, strangled and a pigeon on a string tied around her neck.” 

A picture of a girl in a rowing blazer with a patch on the front. “Lena Andrews, 1967. Student at one of the Oxbridges. Raped, stabbed and decapitated -”

Cassian waved a hand, breathing deeply and trying to stop the bile that kept rising to his mouth. “Please stop, Jyn. I’ve heard enough.”

“But I’ve found -”

“I know, and I’m very grateful that you did, but my question is what a teenage girl from the Kent Marshes was doing trying to investigate these murders.”

Jyn seemed to bite her tongue for a moment, then scratched at the bird on her neck. “She was looking for the killer as well.”

  
  
  
  


\--

 

  
  


The moon was high in the sky by the time they were capable of speech again, sitting out on a bench in the overgrown grounds of the manor, the branches of the trees dark fingers reaching into the sky above them. 

Cassian resisted the urge to shiver. 

Jyn looked over at him, placing her hand gently over his shoulder.

He sighed and rubbed his free hand over his face, not moving the other one yet. He didn’t want to lose that human touch. Not now. 

“Where does this all lead?”

There was no response, but Jyn’s hand tightened on his shoulder. 

He tilted his head back to look at the starless night from where he was sitting on the bench, the moon hanging dimly in the sky like an all seeing eye. “I was only supposed to solve one murder.”

Jyn shifted closer to him. “But here we are.”

A moment of silence, broken only by the wind rustling through the leaves above them. 

“Your Mara really did have a weird hobby.”

Cassian laughed sardonically. “You’re telling me,” he said before biting his tongue. There was something niggling at the corner of his mind. “You know, it’s really weird that some insanely sick serial killer was slaughtering women for at least seventeen years without anyone managing to catch them.”

Jyn’s hand tightened on his for a moment, almost to the point of pain before she loosened her grip and shifted even closer, their sides almost touching. Her eyes were sharp, like a huntress on the chase. 

“It’s not really that unbelievable, Cassian. There’ve been hundreds of unsolved murders in the UK during the twentieth century.” She pursed her lips briefly. “I heard some professor of criminology say once that serial killers tend to be rare, but we’ve probably got some that were never caught.

Also, the murders all over the place and over a pretty long stretch of time, with no pattern. The cops wouldn’t look for seemingly unrelated murders that you’d need a knowledge of Bible quotes to solve.

Plus, crimes against women aren’t all that uncommon in the UK. I mean, sure, these are crazy and horrible, but it doesn’t take some psychopath to start killing and hurting women for no apparent reason.” Her voice kept going, softer this time. “It’s just your average garden-variety arsehole that goes after women half the time."

She started picking at the tattoos on her wrists. 

_ What could have possessed her to get handcuffs tattooed on herself? _

Cassian leaned in towards her. “You know, this only really leaves one big question here, right? How the hell did Mara Jade Palpatine know about all of this?”

Jyn shrugged. “Occam’s Razor, Cassian. The simplest explanation is always the best one.” She paused for a moment, taking a breath in and straightening her back. “There’s got to be some connection to the Palpatine family.”

  
  
  
  


\--

  
  
  
  


By the time that they had finished going over ideas, the wind had risen again and Jyn was starting to shiver, no matter how hard she was trying to hide it. 

Their walk back through the dark grounds was silent, with only the rustle of the trees in the distance. They walked back through the deserted corridors and dusty portraits and bloody secrets of the manor until they reached his rooms again. 

There was something about the women that had been murdered which niggled at the edge of Cassian’s mind. 

“There’s one more connection,” Cassian said suddenly, the pieces starting to come together. “Maybe you’ve already heard of it.”

“What connection? I told you, I couldn’t find one.”

Cassian shook his head. “It’s more than that, Jyn. It’s their names.”

“Their names?” She chewed on her tongue, looking thoughtful for a moment. A shake of her head. 

“They’re all Biblical. Mary, Sarah, Rachel, the list goes on and on.”

Another shake of her head. “Liv isn’t a Biblical name.”

“Yes it is. Liv means to live - it’s the Hebrew form of Eve. And what’s Magda short for, Jyn?”

Jyn grimaced. “Madgalena.”

“The whore, the first woman, the Virgin,” Cassian took a deep breath, before turning to look out the window. “There’s enough here to make a psychologist’s head spin. The Bible verses, the names -”

“But they’re all from the Old Testament, Cassian.”

“Which means -”

“That they’re all Jewish.” 

Cassian turned back to the window, looking out at the dark windows of Orson Krennic’s house. “The family has their fair share of Nazis. Maybe one of them did it.”

There was a crackle from the fireplace where Jyn was poking at the flames, the light casting her in shades of molten copper, the bird on her neck seeming to finally take flight. 

He tried to put a smile on his face, but it probably looked more like a grimace. “Your work is impressive. I can see why your boss values your work so much.”

Jyn kept staring into the flames, as if they could tell her something. “Yeah,” her voice was soft. “But normally when I take work that interests me, it doesn’t involve slaughtered women.”

“You know, the job that I originally hired you for is over. You can just go back to London,” he said, moving closer to her. 

Her profile gave nothing away. “I’m not done with this,” she muttered in a soft voice.

Cassian leaned against to the wall next to her.

“I know the feeling,” he said, his words coming in a single rush. “I know what it’s like when the story gets under your skin. When you know something’s wrong there, and you have to keep going and you have to know more. I don’t know if I can get the same rate I was paying you before, but I’m sure Tarkin can arrange a living wage for you. I’ll talk to him in the morning.” 

He shook his head, the silence settling between them, before grabbing a blanket from the back of the couch. “I’ll take the couch, Jyn. You can have the bed.”

The lines of her face sharp when she glared at him. “I can sleep on a couch for a night, Cassian.”

He smiled softly, sitting on the couch. “So can I. Go to bed, Jyn.”

She grabbed the blanket and he shrugged, making an aborted gesture towards the couch. 

Very well. If she really did insist. 

There was something on her face, a look of almost fond remembrance, as he walked from the living room into the bedroom. 

He had just turned off the lights when he heard her voice from the living room. “ _ Her _ name isn’t.”

“What?”

“Mara. Her name. It isn’t Jewish.”

The darkness, when it came, was all consuming and swallowed him whole. 

  
  
  
  


\--   
  
  
  


 

There was the distant clicking of keyboard keys when he woke up, his mind still groggy. He stood and got dressed, his footsteps soft as he walked into the living room.

Jyn was sitting there on a laptop, her back to him and he could see three things.

First, the dragon tattoo curling over her back, its talons sharp and its mouth open, beautiful and terrifying all at once. 

Second, the elaborate constellations that surrounded it, a thousand tiny stars inked into her skin. 

The third thing he realised, as his mind woke up and shook off the grogginess, was that Jyn was using  _ his _ laptop and was going over  _ his _ notes. 

“What the hell? What are you doing?”

She turned to face him, her eyes bright. “Going over your notes.”

Cassian ran a hand through his hair, his mind too tired to process what was going on properly. “That laptop is password protected! And so are those notes!”

Jyn shrugged. “It takes less than a minute to download a program from the internet which can crack the encryption on a MacBook. You really should be more careful.” She pointed to a pot on the dining table. “Want some coffee?”

He ran a hand over his face. If he hadn’t seen her kindness last night, he would have thought her an immature information junkie with the morals and ethics of a delinquent child.

A shake of his head. 

There was no point dwelling on this, he reminded himself, pouring a cup of coffee, watching the white of the milk be swallowed up by its inky darkness. 

“Your notes were complete before you knew we were looking for a serial killer.”

He started for a moment, before he realised that Jyn was talking to him. “That’s basically true. I was just writing down questions that I wanted to ask Palpatine. It wasn’t particularly structured. I thought I’d just be working on an autobiography - just another chapter in the life of the Emperor.”

The room fell silent and Cassian went back to sipping at his coffee, looking at the notes he’d taped to the wall earlier.

There was something there, he knew it. 

“It’s amazing what you figured out from the accident photos,” Jyn said, her voice sounding as if she was a million miles away.

“What?”

“I was looking at your notes. You know? The ones talking about the accident in front of the manor? You were onto something there, I think.”

His mind was blank. Which photos? There had been a huge amount of them.

Jyn shrugged. “Anyway, the company you emailed wants to talk to you in person. Something about not trusting you when you say that their old negatives could solve a cold case. Why’d you think they’ve still got the negatives, anyway?”

His mind snapped to the present, before he grabbed his laptop back from Jyn. “Oh, photographers are as possessive and as picky as any creatures on this earth. If the photo’s not exactly right, they’ll archive it and never look at it again.”

“So you’re hoping that they’ve still got the photos that show what Mara was looking at.”

“Yeah. I’ll probably head off to London tomorrow morning and talk to them then.” 

“You want me to hack them and get them for you?”

“No!” he said. “I thought we talked about ethics.”

She shrugged. “It won’t be that hard, I can still hack them if you want.”

He shook his head. “No! I wouldn’t do that on principle, anyway. Plus, I doubt rejected negatives from the 1960s would’ve been digitised and put on their servers.”

Jyn made a small, non-committal noise. 

He nodded absent-mindedly, trying to wrap his brain around something that she had said earlier. “What did you mean that you thought you’d found something in the accident photos?”

Jyn was pointed to a photograph that he’d tacked to the wall. “This photo, Cassian? From the accident? I think I found something in it.”

He stood up, coming up behind her to look closer, feeling the warmth of her skin against his, before his mind cast itself back to the haze of desire and fear from last night. A shake of his head.

Cassian looked closer at the photo, the one of the wreck where the manor house had accidentally been captured in focus.

Her finger was pointing directly at one of the windows. 

He squinted, trying to see what she saw. 

“It’s a face, Cassian. And that’s Mara’s window. I don’t think that’s her, either.”

Dark hair. He saw dark hair and the pale face of a young woman looking out of Mara’s window. 

“That‘s not Mara, she had red hair,” she said. 

_ Natasi Daala. _

She’d known Mara around that time. 

And she’d be around the right age for that. 

Why had she been looking out of Mara’s window on the day that she disappeared?

He needed to know.

He needed to ask her now. 

The walk to his car slipped by in a matter of seconds, barely registering Jyn’s heavy footsteps as she walked next to him before he heard her sharp gasp at his side and felt her grabbing his arm.

He stood there, too startled to move, taking in the horrific scene before them, fighting back the urge to retch.

His hand went instinctively to the holster beneath his jacket, while Jyn pulled out her phone and started taking photographs. 

The charred corpse resting atop the hood of his car.

Not human, definitely. A cat?

Its legs had been cut off and arranged in the middle of a circle drawn with blood. 

Its head was sitting on the seat of Jyn’s motorcycle, the leather now stained rust-brown with dried blood.

And the arrangement of the body. 

A swastika. 

Someone had mutilated a cat to form a swastika.

The picture of Palpatine in his Nazi uniform flashed back into his head.

What was Empire Enterprises trying to hide?

  
  
  
  
  


\---

  
  
  


 

Tarkin’s face was impassive as Cassian laid the photographs of the dead cat on his desk. 

“Well, that’s certainly something, Mister Andor.”

Cassian leaned forward in his seat, looking at the wall in front of him, almost an exact replica of the decor in Palpatine’s office minus the giant mirror. He rested his hands on the desk. 

“Who do you think would sign their name like that?”

Something flickered across Tarkin’s face. “I’m not entirely certain. There’s certainly a number of people whose feathers have been ruffled by this investigation. Do you think that you should stop the investigation?”

He shook his head. “Why? The job was to find a murderer, after all.”

“This is ridiculous, Cassian, if you’re putting your own life and that of your assistant in danger. You’ve done enough work for the family. We can handle the rest ourselves.”

“Can I speak to Mister Palpatine myself, then?”

Tarkin’s eyes seemed to bore through him. “Absolutely not. We can’t risk him having another attack.”

“Then tell him that I wish him well, and also that I’m moving forward in the investigation.”

His face was a barely concealed mask of desire and ambition. “How?”

Curious. Cassian would have thought that Tarkin would be mad if he kept digging around. 

“Mara. I heard that she was deeply religious, but did you know anything else of her interests?”

He looked nonplussed. “I didn’t know anything of Mara. We moved in different circles and besides, in the year before her death, she was living with Padme Amidala.”

Cassian furrowed his brow. 

_ Why hadn’t Palpatine mentioned that earlier? _

“I’m sorry - you said that Mara was living with Padme Amidala in the year before her death?”

Tarkin nodded, his face as sober as a judge and his eyes bright as a miser’s faced with an open bank vault. “Does that have anything to do with what you’ve been looking into? The inner dealings with the family are considered private for a very good reason, no matter what Palpatine and his misguided quest for justice think.”

Cassian shook his head. “There are just a lot of questions that need answers, and I feel that a lot of people are trying to prevent me finding those out.”

Tarkin leaned back in his seat, laying his arms on the armrest. “And what makes you believe that, Mister Andor?”

Cassian’s eyes flicked towards the photographs of the dead cat before he stood up. As he reached the door, Tarkin said, “What was the point of this meeting, Mister Andor?”

Cassian turned back and shrugged. “Honestly? I’m trying to send a message to whoever’s coming after me. I’m working directly for Mister Palpatine and you. Anyone who wants to hurt me, they’d better see this as a shot across the bow.”

Krennic was waiting outside Tarkin’s office when he left, looking as though he had aged a dozen years in the last few days. “How are things with you, Cassian?”

“More interesting with every day that passes. When Mister Palpatine is feeling better, I hope that I can satisfy his curiosity.”

  
  
  
  


\--

  
  
  


 

By the time he got back to his room, Jyn was perched on his bed on her laptop, typing frantically. 

She looked up at the sound of the door opening, her face briefly looking guilty before her normal blank expression settled into place. 

_ What had Jyn been working on? _

He tossed that thought out of his mind - she’d done enough to help him already, whether that was finding the identities of the other girls or by spotting the dark-haired woman in Mara’s window. 

Cassian sat silently at the end of the bed before he heard her voice, soft but with the edge of steel behind it.

“When I find the motherfucker that tortured an innocent cat just to send us a warning, I’m going to clobber them with a baseball bat.”

“You think it’s a warning?”

A shrug. “You have a better explanation for it? It means  _ something _ , Cassian. You spoke to Tarkin - he tell you anything about who could have done it?”

“Look, Jyn, whatever’s going on, it’s absolutely disgusting and we’ve clearly rattled someone enough for them to do this. But there’s another problem, too.”

“I know. Someone does an animal sacrifice in the style of the original murders from the 50s and 60s? Doesn’t seem likely that the original murderer could be putting dead animals on your car today.”

Cassian sighed. “Do you think that there’s more than one person?”

Jyn shrugged. “Seems like it. Maybe a team. One young, one old.”

Outside the manor, a car roared past. 

Cassian mentally ran through a list of people that it could have been. There wasn’t a very long list. 

Krennic?

Did he have something to do with it?

Tarkin or Palpatine? 

They were around the right age to have committed the original murders. 

Jyn was silent, chewing her lip for a moment. “I’ll head off to London with you in the morning. I’ll be back late tomorrow night.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Pick up some gadgets. I work for a security company, we’ll get some from there.”

“You think that’s really necessary?”

Jyn’s expression was stone. “If someone’s willing to do  _ this, _ what’s to stop them from attacking  _ us _ next time?”

**Author's Note:**

> Dedicated to the lovely Shaads. I cannot wait to see what you've done in comparison to my tomfoolery. 
> 
> Copious thanks to the following people:
> 
> swdsnygeek: You need to stop inspiring me to write AU fics. It's getting embarrassing.
> 
> TinCanTelephone: Thank you so much for beta-ing my work. Your confusion at both the story and my messed up mind have been appreciated to an unimaginable degree. 
> 
> imsfire: You are an absolute legend for putting up with my madness and foolery. Thank you for the geographic help and the sounding board.


End file.
